Hayhoe: Arguing about climate change won’t change minds

Haze lingers over the downtown skyline mid day on July 11, 2013. Figures from local monitoring stations show a reduction since 2013 in ground-level ozone. But local officials are worried that pollution from oil and gas production and a possible adoption of more stringent federal standards could knock San Antonio out of compliance for air quality.

Haze lingers over the downtown skyline mid day on July 11, 2013....

Peer-reviewed studies from scientists agreeing on climate change could stack to the balcony of the historic Coates Chapel at Southwest School of Art, rising high above the heads of the audience members who came to listen to Katharine Hayhoe’s lecture Friday night.

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“Doesn’t matter,” said Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. “It isn’t more science that will make the difference.”

Her lecture “Climate Change: Facts, Fictions & What it Means to Texas,” benefited the Land Heritage Institute, which is developing a living land museum and educational center on 1,200 acres on the South Side.

Hayhoe answered common questions about climate change during her talk, such as — If the Earth is warming, why did Boston get so much snow last winter? — and walked through the data that shows temperatures rising across the planet and in the oceans.

Climate change has become one of the most polarizing issues in the U.S., but Hayhoe said arguing about it won’t help: Social science studies show arguing about something actually entrenches people’s positions. People today listen to and read whatever media agree with the opinions they already hold.

Hayhoe said people don’t have to agree on climate change, but can move past the political divide to agree on things that will improve lives, such as the need for better energy efficiency, retrofitting older buildings and conservation.

She’s often called an “environmental evangelist,” both a climate scientist and an evangelical Christian, who is the author, with her husband, Andrew Farley, of “A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions.” Time magazine listed her in its “100 most influential people” in 2014 for her work as a climate scientist and communicator. In 2012, Christianity Today named her one of its “50 Women to Watch.”

Hayhoe said the days where temperatures reach more than 80, 90 or 100 degrees are increasing in San Antonio. The variability in the amount of rainfall the city receives is increasing. Across Texas, every season has been warming since the 1950s, though winter temperatures are getting warmest the fastest.

She said climate change won’t bring a plague of locusts. Instead, it will bring the same crazy weather that Texas has always had, “but it’s going to bring it to us on steroids.”

A warming planet means more water evaporates into the atmosphere. When a storm system comes along, it can pick up more water in the air, making increased precipitation more likely. And in Boston last winter, that came in the form of snow, Hayhoe said. Droughts become more extreme, too.

A hurdle to getting people to understand the threats, Hayhoe said, is that the image in everyone’s mind when it comes to climate change is polar bears.

“If we are taking about overhauling our entire global energy system for the polar bear, who is going to sign on that dotted line?” Hayhoe asked.

A sea level rise 1,000 years ago would have meant that people living on coastlines would simply move inland. A farmer that could no longer farm in an area would go somewhere else. “What would you do?” Hayhoe asked. “Move. Pick up your tent.”

Now many of the world’s major cities are on coastlines and there are 7 billion people on the planet. “We’ve made ourselves vulnerable, and that’s why climate change matters,” Hayhoe said.